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Tuesday, April 19, 2011

So, quick survey – how many of you are reading this wondering how I will relate this to family history!?!?

I’ve been putting together a book of stories from when my sister’s children were young. We call it “The Mouser Family Absolutely True Stories.” I wrote down many of these stories back before there were so many cool ways to put words and pictures in books to share. These are just all in a word document. So, now I am gathering pictures and trying to make them into something to share.

This is the story I am working on today and I just couldn’t resist blogging it as well.

When my sister’s two girls were about 3 and 5, the older one could torment the life out of the younger one just by what she said. One of Kyli's favorite times to tease her little sister was when they were in the car. I guess sitting there in those car seats had to be pretty boring because before too long, Kyli would look over at her sister and say (very quietly), “You have a swan on your head.” Codi would immediately wail, “Mommy, Kyli says I have a swan on my head. I don’t waaaaaannnt a swan on my head!!!” Very often actual tears would ensue. My sister could try to reason with Codi but it didn’t really matter because Kyli SAID the swan was there. Of course Kyli would just sit there with an angelic look on her face. Sometime it would be a dinosaur or even an inanimate object that would be “on” Codi’s head. The results were always the same however. Over the years as we’ve re-told the story – as family’s will – it’s always the swan we use to tell the tale.

As adults, we laugh at how gullible poor little Codi was to fall for something so silly. How could something her big sister said override the obvious fact that there WAS NO SWAN? Yet as adults we do the same thing all our lives – we believe that one bad thing someone else says no matter how many others tell us it isn’t so. We even spend time worrying about that stupid swan and refuse to listen to those we know are “older and wiser” who tell us that really, we do NOT have a swan on our head!

It’s become something of a proverb in our family now, “Don’t let someone else put a swan on your head.”

^Codi. There really was a swan on your head. Thats why its so skwashed looking and didn't look cute until very recently when it smoothed out because the swan migrated south to brazil where the economy is shot sooooo badly that the swan can afford to live very nicely with all the money it has earned from me to sit on your head when no ones looking.

Diana - cute story. I remember my sister and I sitting in the back of our station wagon and getting in huge fights about who had crossed over the line in the upholstery that divided our "sides" of the car. More than once, my mom threatened to pull the car over - she never did. We would settle down for a few minutes and then start back up again. I don't know how mom survived those long road trips from Washington State to Idaho!

OK Anon1 and Anon2 - you know you really COULD take a second and set up a profile...not that I don't know exactly who you are :-) Codi, you must feel so good know find out that there really WAS a swan and Kyli was just paying it to only be there when we weren't looking!! Love you both!

I enjoyed this story. It reminded me of the fun my two sisters and I had when going to the coast for a holiday involved a 2-day drive from our outback home. We did crosswords, played lots of versions of 'I spy', and sometimes had a fight that made Dad to threaten to offload us!